Guide for Authors

Resuscitation

Guide for Authors

An interdisciplinary journal for the dissemination of clinical and basic science research relating to cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

RESUSCITATIONGuide for AuthorsResuscitation is a monthly interdisciplinary medical journal and is the official journal of the European Resuscitation Council. The papers published deal with the aetiology, pathophysiology and prevention of cardiac arrest, resuscitation training, clinical resuscitation, and experimental resuscitation research although papers relating to animal studies will be published only if they are of exceptional interest and related directly to clinical cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Papers relating to trauma are published occasionally but the majority of these concern specifically traumatic cardiac arrest. Review articles and Letters to the Editor, particularly relating to articles previously published in Resuscitation, are welcome. We no longer publish case reports as papers but a case of exceptional interest and originality may be considered for publication if submitted in the form of a letter to the editor.

Editorial policy The originality of content of papers submitted and the quality of the work on which they are based is the prime consideration of the editors. The paper should deal with original material, neither previously published nor being considered for publication elsewhere, except in special circumstances agreed with the Editor-in-Chief. A small number of papers are randomly selected for plagiarism software checking. Most papers are assigned to an editor and sent for peer review; papers may be returned to authors as accepted, for reconsideration after revision, or rejection. The reviewers name may or may not be revealed to the author(s), depending on the reviewer's preference. The decision of the Editor-in-Chief regarding acceptance or rejection is final. Papers that are not within the scope of the journal or are far below the standard for publication in Resuscitation will be rejected by the Editors without obtaining peer review. Papers that simply describe a clinical trial protocol will be rejected. Resuscitation operates a word limit for all articles as detailed in the table below. Manuscripts will be returned to the author if the word count is exceeded.

Submission of papers Authors must submit their original manuscript and figures online via http://ees.elsevier.com/resus which is the Elsevier web-based submission and peer-review system. You will find full instructions located on this site - a Guide for Authors and a Guide for Online Submission. Please follow these guidelines to prepare and upload your article.

Once the manuscript has been uploaded, our system automatically generates an electronic PDF proof, which is then used for reviewing. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revisions, will be managed via this system. Authors may also track the progress of their paper using this system to final decision.

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement.

Once an article has been accepted, the uncorrected provisional pdf will be published immediately online pending publication of the fully formatted final version.

Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations (please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions).

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: please consult http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.

Your manuscript should be submitted together with a covering letter which should be signed by the corresponding author on behalf of all authors and should include:

* A statement that all authors have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship as defined above should be listed in an acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or is the chair of the department who provided only general support. Authors should disclose whether they had any writing assistance and identify the entity that paid for this assistance.

* A statement describing any overlap with previous publications and confirmation that the manuscript, including related data, figures and tables, has not been published previously and that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere.

* The names and contact addresses (including e-mail) of two potential reviewers that have not been involved in the design, performance and discussion of the data and are not a co-worker. These may or may not be used at the Editor's discretion. You may also mention persons who you would prefer not to review your paper.

Online Only Publications Due to the large volume of submissions to the journal, letters to the Editor will be published online-only and will be listed on the contents page of a print issue. All letters will be available open access on http://www.resuscitationjournal.com

Conflict of interest At the end of the text, under a subheading 'Conflict of interest statement' all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. If an author has no conflict of interest, state this explicitly.

Role of the funding source All sources of funding must be declared as an acknowledgement at the end of the text. Authors should declare the role of study sponsors, if any, in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. If the study sponsors had no such involvement, the authors should so state. Please see http://www.elsevier.com/funding

Ethics and Patient Consent Work on human beings that is submitted to Resuscitation must comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki; Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Adopted by the 18th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964, amended by the 29th World Medical Assembly, Tokyo, Japan, October 1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, Italy, October 1983, and the 41st World Medical Assembly, Hong Kong, September 1989. The manuscript must contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that, where appropriate, subjects gave informed consent to the work. The Ethics/Institutional approval reference number must be included in the paper. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication.

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity.

Randomised controlled trials Resuscitation has adopted the proposal from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which requires, as a condition of consideration for publication of clinical trials, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrolment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. For this purpose, a clinical trial is defined as any research project that assigns human subjects prospectively to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g. phase I trials), and manikin or laboratory studies would be exempt. Further information can be found at http://www.icmje.org.

All randomised controlled trials submitted for publication in Resuscitation should be written to comply with the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines. Authors must include the CONSORT flow chart and ensure that all elements in the CONSORT checklist are covered. A copy of the CONSORT checklist must be uploaded as supplemental material. Please refer to the CONSORT statement website at http://www.consort-statement.org for more information.

Animal studies Animal studies must be reported in accordance with the ARRIVE guidelines (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) and must include the checklist as supplemental material. A blank form can be downloaded for completion here. An example of a completed checklist can be found at http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/page.asp?id=1357. (The example checklist is based on an original publication by Kilkenny C, Browne WJ, Cuthill IC, Emerson M, Altman DG (2010) Improving Bioscience Research Reporting: The ARRIVE Guidelines for Reporting Animal Research. PLoS Biol 8(6): e1000412. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000412).

The institutional protocol number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article.

Other study designsOther types of study designs should follow the relevant guidance notes for standardized reporting. These can be accessed via the EQUATOR network. http://www.equator-network.org/library/

Structure of papers Papers must comply with the word count and figure, table and reference limit listed above.

All papers must include a separate title page documenting: authors' full names, academic and professional affiliations and complete addresses; the name and address of the corresponding author; the word count of the paper and the abstract (if applicable).

Original papers, reviews and short papers must include an abstract of no longer than 250 words. This should be a structured abstract listing the aim of the study (or review), the methods (or 'data sources' for a review), the results and the conclusion. Commentaries must include a brief abstract of no more than 100 words that summarises the key points.

Papers must be written concisely and conform to the style of Resuscitation. They should be clearly divided into sections: Introduction; Methods; Results; Discussion; Conclusions; Conflicts of Interest; Acknowledgments; References; Legends to figures. For review papers and commentaries use appropriate sub-headings instead of methods, results and discussion.

Language All papers submitted to the Editor-in-Chief must use 'English' spelling e.g. haemodynamic, ischaemia, aetiology, oesophagus etc. Use generic names for all drugs. The term 'adrenaline' is preferred to 'epinephrine': for the first use only, 'adrenaline' should be followed by 'epinephrine' in brackets (parentheses). Similar arrangements apply to noradrenaline and norepinephrine.

Resuscitation has an international readership: keep abbreviations to a minimum and confine as much as possible to those in regular use. Too many abbreviations make reading difficult. Abbreviations of units must conform to the International System of Units (SI), for example, kg, g, mg, cm, mm, ml, mg kg-1. Plurals have the same abbreviations as used for the singular. If non-regular abbreviations are used supply a list of these with their definitions as a footnote to page 1. Do not use abbreviations of this type in the Abstract.

Supplementary data (including multimedia and video) The journal accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files allow the author to submit supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more, which will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of the recommended file formats (for detailed guidance on formats for supplementary files go to http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/file_formats).

AudioSlides The journal encourages authors to create an AudioSlides presentation with their published article. AudioSlides are brief, webinar-style presentations that are shown next to the online article on ScienceDirect. This gives authors the opportunity to summarize their research in their own words and to help readers understand what the paper is about. More information and examples are available at http://www.elsevier.com/audioslides. Authors of this journal will automatically receive an invitation e-mail to create an AudioSlides presentation after acceptance of their paper.

Insert citations in superscript (after punctuation) and list the references on a separate sheet in numerical sequence in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. References cited only in tables or figure legends are numbered in accordance with the sequences established by the first identification in the text of the particular figure or table. List all authors when there are six or less; when there are seven or more, list the first three, then 'et al'. Abbreviate the titles of journals according to the style used in Index Medicus. Avoid using the words 'in press' in references if possible. The list of journals can be found at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/terms_cond.html

Numbered references to personal communications, unpublished data or manuscripts either 'in preparation' or 'submitted for publication' are unacceptable. If essential, include this material at the appropriate place in the text. Illustrations must be in a form and condition suitable for reproduction. The illustration should bear the manuscript titles and be numbered in Arabic numerals according to the sequence of their appearance in the text, where they should be referred to as Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc. Line-drawings should be drawn at least twice the size of their final intended appearance. Lettering should be clear and of adequate size to be legible after reduction. The extent of reduction will be determined by the publisher, but in general the same reduction will be applied to all figures in the same paper. Reproduction in colour is subject to approval by the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher. The extra costs of print colour reproduction will be charged to the author(s) although colour reproduction online is free of charge. Each illustration must have a legend that is typed with double spacing on a separate page and beginning with the number of the illustration they refer to.

Tables of numerical data are typed (also with double-spacing) on a separate page, numbered in sequence in Arabic numerals (Table 1, 2, etc.) and provided with a heading, a legend, and referred to the text as Table 1, Table 2, etc.

Elsevier has negotiated with several language editing companies to provide language editing services to our authors at competitive rates. Asia Science Editing, Diacritech Language Editing Services, Edanz Editing, International Science Editing, ScienceDocs Editing Services and SPI Publisher Services provide language and copy editing services globally to authors who would like assistance either before they submit an article for peer review or before it is accepted for publication. http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/languagepolishing

This journal offers authors two choices to publish their research; 1. Open Access • Articles are freely available to both subscribers and the wider public with permitted reuse• An Open Access publication fee is payable by authors or their research funder

2. Subscription• Articles are made available to subscribers as well as developing countries and patient groups through our access programs (http://www.elsevier.com/access) • No Open Access publication fee

All articles published Open Access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. Permitted reuse is defined by your choice of one of the following Creative Commons user licenses:

Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA): for non-commercial purposes, lets others distribute and copy the article, to create extracts, abstracts and other revised versions, adaptations or derivative works of or from an article (such as a translation), to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), to text and data mine the article, as long as they credit the author(s), do not represent the author as endorsing their adaptation of the article, do not modify the article in such a way as to damage the author's honor or reputation, and license their new adaptations or creations under identical terms (CC BY NC SA).

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC-BY-NC-ND): for non-commercial purposes, lets others distribute and copy the article, and to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), as long as they credit the author(s) and provided they do not alter or modify the article.

Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY): available only for authors funded by organizations with which Elsevier has established an agreement. For a full list please see http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

Elsevier has established agreements with funding bodies. This ensures authors can comply with funding body Open Access requirements, including specific user licenses, such as CC-BY. Some authors may also be reimbursed for associated publication fees. http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies

To provide Open Access, this journal has a publication fee which needs to be met by the authors or their research funders for each article published Open Access. Your publication choice will have no effect on the peer review process or acceptance of submitted articles. The Open Access publication fee for this journal is 2500 USD, excluding taxes.

Author Enquiries The facility to track accepted articles and set up e-mail alerts to inform you when an article's status changes can be found at: http://authors.elsevier.com/TrackPaper.html. There is also information on artwork guidelines, copyright information, and answers to frequently asked questions.

If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Once accepted for publication, significant changes to the article will be considered at this stage only with permission from the Editor-in-Chief. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proof reading is solely your responsibility. Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Online proof correctionCorresponding authors will receive an e-mail with a link to our online proofing system, allowing annotation and correction of proofs online. The environment is similar to MS Word: in addition to editing text, you can also comment on figures/tables and answer questions from the Copy Editor. Web-based proofing provides a faster and less error-prone process by allowing you to directly type your corrections, eliminating the potential introduction of errors.If preferred, you can still choose to annotate and upload your edits on the PDF version. All instructions for proofing will be given in the e-mail we send to authors, including alternative methods to the online version and PDF.We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately - please upload all of your corrections within 48 hours. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.

Reprints The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use. Paper offprints can be ordered by the authors. An order form with prices will be sent to the corresponding author.